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White (also White people, White race or Whites) is one of various color metaphors for race used as a form of classification of people. Though literally implying light-skinned, "White" has been used in different ways at different times and places. Like other color metaphors commonly employed to categorise human ethnic or racial groups, its precise definition is unclear with no common standard. Many scientists have pointed out the problem of an arbitrary number of categories being chosen and the gradations between categories.

Although different definitions of "White" vary, the most common feature among them is that it encompasses people with origins in the original peoples of Europe. By this definition, the areas of the world that are considered to have a predominantly "White" population include all of the countries of Europe, as well as Argentina, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United States of America, and Uruguay.

Across the globe, and especially throughout the Western Hemisphere, a person's consideration as "White" has been affected by past or present colloquial, scientific and legal understandings , including definitions based for such purposes as censuses, anti-miscegenation laws, affirmative action, and racial quotas . These factors and the groups they involve are explored throughout the article.

Genetic History of Europe

This section describes demographic and genetic flow into Europe. For a broader, more detailed view of Human migrations, see that article.

Paleolithic

The human species (homo sapiens) began to colonize Europe about 35 millennia ago. By about 25 millenia ago, the prior inhabitants (H. neanderthalensis) became extinct. About 22 millennia ago, glaciers began to cover Europe, rendering Northern Europe uninhabitable; some humans survived in refugia farther south. When the glaciers receded about 16 millennia ago, the refugia populations and possibly other people from Asia and Africa re-colonized the newly inhabitable region.

Neolithic

About eight millennia ago, farming spread from Asia throughout Europe. Results from mtDNA researchers and Y-chromosome lineage researchers have converged on a 20% Neolithic - 80% Paleolithic ratio of genetic contribution to today's European population. An mtDNA vs. Y discrepancy is explained by noting that in migrations, a common pattern is foreign males producing offspring with indigenous females.

Later migration from Asia

Over the next six millennia, Europe was swept by successive waves of settlers and invaders from central and eastern Asia. Asian autosomal DNA makes an important contribution to the gene pools of Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, present at frequencies ranging from almost 50% in Lapland to between 7 and 13% in Finland, Russia and Hungary, which steadily decline from the Urals towards the western Europe.

Contrary to some older racial theories, Finnish speakers are not Asiatic people, but are genetically closer to their Scandinavian and Baltic neighbours, who, like all the European populations also have some proportion of the same DNA markers. The closest relatives of Finns (and probably other Finnic peoples) are Germanic speakers.

An interesting case is the genetic marker known as Haplogroup R1a. Although it is believed to be of European Paleolithic origins and is very frequent in Northern, Central and Eastern Europe, it is also one of the most important genetic markers to be found in numerous Asian populations and in India and Pakistan.

North African and Near Eastern influences

There are a number of genetic markers which are characteristic of Horn African and North African populations which are to be found in European populations signifying ancient and modern population movements. These markers are to be found throughout the continent. For these, Near Eastern and Proto-Basque (Native European) influences see:

Sub-Saharan African slaves

Finally, aside from E3b, sub-Saharan African DNA is scattered throughout the European continent. The amount of black admixture in Europe today ranges from a few percent in Iberia to almost nil around the Baltic. It seems to show a decreasing cline from the southwest to the northeast, which corresponds with the areas most affected by the African slave trade. For more details, see Sub-Saharan DNA admixture in Europe.

For a global perspective on this topic, see Atlas of the Human Journey, World Haplogroups Maps, Origins of Europeans and Genetic Structure of Human Populations.

Terminology

Pre-modern usage of White may not correspond to current concepts. Europeans who traveled to Northeast Asia in the 17 century applied White to the people they encountered (see suggested readings below) — the term having no other connotations at that time — and indeed, even today the name of the Bai people of Yunnan, China translates as "white".

As European colonization of the Americas and eventually other parts of the world brought Europeans into close contact with other peoples, the term White and other contrasting racial colour terms, such as black, brown, yellow, and red, etc, came into wide use as a quick shorthand to refer to race.

By the 18 century, "White" had begun shifting in meaning and started showing signs of becoming an exclusive label. European people, including European colonists in the New World, defined the other people with reference to "White." "Black" or "brown" people came to be defined by having darker skin than a "White" person, and the same "color" came to be applied to all non-white people.

In the United States

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In Europe

A common 19 century European view categorized most White people as either Semitic or Aryan. The latter term was used as a synonym for Indo-Europeans, who were conceived of as racially separate from Semitic peoples on the grounds that the two groups had distinct linguistic histories. This was thought to imply separate ancestry, which was supposed to be visible in different cultural and physical traits. The term Aryan derived from Indo-European speaking peoples who occupied ancient Iran and the Indus valley, a fact that problematised its equation with the term "White". However, from c. 1880 some writers theorised that the earliest Aryans came from northern Europe. This led to the Nazi claim that Aryans were identical with Nordic peoples. Later 20 century scholars were much more reluctant to assume coincidence between linguistic and genetic descent, since language can be easily passed to genetically unrelated populations.

In Europe, the usage of the term "White" as a "racial indicator" had fallen out of use, considered obsolete if any. The terms of ethnicity and linguistics are widely employed for autochthonous peoples and immigrant communities alike. Unlike other European nations, the United Kingdom still uses the term White as a racial indicator. The United Kingdom Census 2001 counts White British among the population.

In Latin America

While outside of the United States people of undiscernable African admixture are considered 'White' and those of slight African appearance are often called "coloured" or mixed race — a blanket term for people of multiple racial heritage — in Latin American countries even those of clearly visible partial African or Amerindian ancestry may be considered white. The individual, however, has to decide what, if any, race he/she is to be acknowledged by. Yet, while in all these countries there is a certain proportion of people that would at least appear to be of "unmixed" European ancestry, in places like the US they may be considered non-White.

Unlike in the United States, race in Latin America "refers mostly to skin color or physical appearance rather than to ancestry." "American orthodoxy is that a single drop of African blood inevitably darkens its host," in Latin America "the problem is approached from the other end of the scale: A single drop of European blood is seen to inevitably whiten... A person with discernible African heritage is not necessarily immutably black." Upward mobility, physical appearance and lighter skin colour allow for choice of an array of intermediate "categories". According to census takers' instructions in Brazil, "color" is explicitly defined as recording the subject's observed skin tone and has nothing to do with "race." Nevertheless, it has been shown that the same individual's perceived skin tone lightens and darkens on the Brazilian census depending on the rise and fall of his or her socioeconomic success.

Social vs. physical perceptions of White

See also: Social interpretations of race

Ultimately, whether any individual considers any other individual as White (or not) often comes down to whether the person "looks White," however, whether someone "looks White" can become a very subjective judgement. Physical appearance is often cited as the reason for categorizing entire nations as non-White.

It is difficult to disentangle "social" from "physical" perceptions because the former depends upon the latter. How American attitudes changed over the centuries exemplifies this fact. As mentioned above, today Americans see German-Americans and Irish-Americans as physically White; otherwise they would be listed as "races" on the federal census. Jews as an ethno-religious group are an in-between category, though leaning more towards a generalised "White" classification. A complicating factor is that most Ashkenazi Jews (European Jews) more closely physically resemble other Europeans than they do peoples of the Middle East, while the reverse tends to be true regarding Mizrahi Jews (Middle Eastern and North African Jews), however, over 90% of the US Jewish population is Ashkenazi. Even this binary analysis of Jews is overly simplistic, and it ignores various other Jewish ethnic divisions (including Ethiopian Jews, Indian Jews, among many others).

The differences between social and physical definitions of White can be explained as identification of White with the dominant community or in-group, as opposed to the Other. In medieval Europe, Christendom was the community, and pagans, heretics, Jews, and Muslims were the outsiders, regardless of skin color. When the primacy of religion was eroded by the Protestant Reformation, the Renaissance, and secularism, separation of peoples based on religion shifted to concepts like White and civilized, although much of the earlier attitude remained, such as exclusion of peoples of different faiths. In the United States, White consciousness was first encouraged to help maintain a caste system and control of labor; then in the early 20 century as a result of mass politics, the definition of White was widened to include Southern and Eastern Europeans.

The current social climate in the West (primarily in the United States) seeks to be nearly all-inclusive, which is an about-face from the social considerations of the 19 and early 20 centuries. This has prompted other groups to draw comparisons to the "one drop rule".

Social vs. official perceptions of White

The social versus official perceptions of "White" is exemplified in the disparities between any given popular definition of white and the official definition and parameters used by the government of the same locales. As discussed for the United States, non-Europeans which had been largely classified as caucasoids, such as Middle Easterners and North Africans, are not typically perceived to be White by society, despite the fact that for the purposes of statistics Middle Easterners and North Africans are always categorised as "White" by US government agencies and the U.S. census . The American government's official parameters for classification of whiteness were formed by a team of anthropologists, though the categories themselves were not based on any "biological, anthropological, or genetic criteria." Nevertheless, there are legal rulings in which South Asians have at various times been deeemed white. In the United Kingdom Census 2001 Whites include only Europeans and not Middle Easterns or North Africans.

Either way, governmental categorisation does not always lead to a sense of inclusion, as many may still be excluded from the general structural concepts of White-American society, and may even experience hostile rejection, particularly Arabs in recent years, especially if Muslim.

In Australia, Middle Easterners and North Africans — are not categorised as White, rather they are regarded as racial minorities (See: Wog). This latter understanding of the term in Australia has little to do with White supremacist exclusionism, but rather a traditional, narrower definition of White which has never encompassed Middle Easterners or North Africans; and which, unlike the definition of "White" in the United States, has not undergone continuous alterations to include an increasing number of people.

Criticisms of the term

The broad usage of social identities such as "White" has been charged by Victor Montejo in his dissertation on racial identity to de-ethnicize individual groups. In South African colonialism the White colonists played down British and Dutch identities in favor of a White identity in relation to the "constructed 'Other' to differentiate its victims from 'Us', that is, through the process of differentiation and thus identification".

During the era of Jim Crow Laws in the Southern United States, facilities were commonly divided into separate sections for White and "Colored" people. These terms were defined by White people, with White people classifying themselves as White and non-White people being classified as "colored".

"White" as opposed to "Light-Skinned"

There is sometimes controversy as to the difference between "light-skinned" as opposed to "White". The term "White" is a misnomer, as almost all people (regardless of race and origin) have pigmentation that makes their skin a color other than white, such as shades of brown or pink. It has been noted that multi-racial individuals (like Keanu Reeves and Dean Cain) have been accepted as White by most Americans. In non-western countries, the terms white and light-skinned are sometimes used interchangeably.

The uniquely pale complexion and melanin-deficient hair common to Nordic adults is often considered the hallmark of those seen as White. This phenomenon's cline is densest within a few hundred miles of the Baltic Sea and, unlike other European skin-tone distributions, is independent of latitude (the natives of lands at higher latitudes than the Baltic are invariably darker than Nordics, for instance Eskimos). See Human skin color for an overall explanation of skin-tone distribution. See The Paleo-Etiology of Human Skin Tone for an explanation of the paleness of Nordics and the lack of variation in Native Americans. Genetic research shows that important areas around the Baltic and Scandinavia indicate a high genetic flow stemming from Asia. See Haplogroup N (Y-DNA).

World distribution

Since the era of European expansion, and especially since the 19 century, most Europeans have come to see most other Europeans as White. Hence, one could say that the indigenous habitat of White people is Europe. Nowadays, countries with a majority of ethnic Europeans include all the nations of Europe, as well as some of the countries colonized by them through the 15 century to 19 century, such as the United States, Canada, the Russian Far East, Siberia, Australia, and New Zealand. In those nations, the indigenous populations were overwhelmed by White colonists from European nations.

As for Latin America, the only countries whose population is composed by an undisputed majority of unmixed — or apparently unmixed — European descendants are Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. Both In fact, according to the CIA World Fact Book, whites make up 93%, 87% and 88% of the population respectively, a percentage that is much higher than is the US. The southern region of Brazil also has a large White majority (85%), however, in the entire country Whites are estimated to make up 53.7% of the population. Although the latter figure would also constitute a White majority (ie. >50%) in Brazil, the figure may be considered inflated due to the above discussed socially fluid concept of race and racial identity in Latin America. Prior to 1959, Cuba had a majority white population of over 70%. Today, depending on the source, whites are said to constitute 37% to 65% of the population, with the remaining population being composed largely of mulattos. The majority of Cuban exiles are or consider themselves to be white. .

There is a significant European-descended minority in South Africa, and smaller ones in Namibia, Zimbabwe, and other former European colonies in Africa.

White people are also common across Northern Africa and the Middle East. The Middle East is a special case, since anthropologically it is a natural continuation of Europe, or Europe a natural continuation of the Middle East. In fact, the Middle East has provided one of the basic genetic contributions since Neolithic times to the European genetic pool. For more details see North African and Near Eastern influences in Europe above.

See also

• Caucasoid
• Caucasian race
• Caucasian American
• European American
• Human skin color
• Whiteness studies

Footnotes

1. Edward E. Telles, Race in Another America: The Significance of Skin Color in Brazil (2002), 1. ISBN 0691118663
2. Eugene Robinson, Coal to Cream: A Black Man's Journey Beyond Color to an Affirmation of Race (1999), 26–27 ISBN 0684857227.
3. For detailed sources and citations, see "Chapter 6. Features of Today's Endogamous Color Line" in Legal History of the Color Line: The Rise and Triumph of the One-Drop Rule by Frank W. Sweet, ISBN 0939479230. A summary of this chapter, with endnotes, is available online at Features of Today's Endogamous Color Line.
4. "Racial Inequality in Brazil and the United States: A Statistical Comparison". Journal of Social History 26 (2): 229-63.
5. Questions and Answers for 2000 Census Data on Race. 2001. August 14, 2006. <http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2001/raceqandas.html>.
6. Questions and Answers for 2000 Census Data on Race. 2001. August 14, 2006. <http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2001/raceqandas.html>.
7. Simpson, S. National Statistics. A guide to comparing 1991 and 2001 Census ethnic group data. 2002. August 14, 2006. <http://www.statistics.gov.uk/articles/nojournal/GuideV9.pdf>.
8. Montejo, Victor. Who Am I? The Construction of Identity in Twentieth-Century South African Autobiographical Writings in English. 2003. August 14, 2006. <http://dissertations.ub.rug.nl/FILES/faculties/arts/2003/s.i.raditlhalo/thesis.pdf>.

External links

• Legally white Precedents of legal opinions and judgments authored by US courts in whiteness cases filed by non-Europeans
• White people are known for... - Google generated racial profile of "White People".
• Not Quite White: Race Classification and the Arab American Experience, by the Arab American Institute
• Scientists Find DNA Change That Accounts for White Skin

Further reading

• Thomas A. Guglielmo, White on Arrival: Italians, Race, Color, and Power in Chicago, 1890-1945, 2003, ISBN 0195155432
• Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race, Harvard, 1999, ISBN 0674951913.
• Frank W. Sweet, Legal History of the Color Line: The Rise and Triumph of the One-Drop Rule, Backintyme, 2005, ISBN 0939479230.
• Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, Routledge, 1996, ISBN 0415918251.
• Karen Brodkin, How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America, Rutgers, 1999, ISBN 081352590X.
• Neil Foley, The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997)
• Theodore Allen, The Invention of the White Race, 2 vols. (London: Verso, 1994)
• Thomas F. Gossett, Race: The History of an Idea in America, New ed. (New York: Oxford University, 1997)
• Ivan Hannaford, Race: The History of an Idea in the West (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1996)
• Audrey Smedley, Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview, 2nd ed. (Boulder: Westview, 1999).
• "The United Independent Compensatory Code/System/Concept" A textbook/workbook for thought, speech and/or action for victims of racism (White supremacy) Neely Fuller Jr. 1984
• Alfredo Tryferis, "Separated by a Common Language: The Strange Case of the White Hispanic," The Raw Story, http://www.rawstory.com/exclusives/tryferis/hispanic.htm.

• Ethnic groups in the United States
• Ethnic groups